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We have sufficiently considered the use to which the particular race-mark of head-form has been put in the attempted classification of the very early men who have left their bones behind them.
Just at this point we shall find it very hard to say what is to be reckoned bodily and what mental. Leaving these niceties to the philosophers, however, let us go ahead as best we can. Oh for an external race-mark about which there could be no mistake! That has always been a dream of the anthropologist; but it is a dream that shows no signs of coming true.
Dorcas knew who it was, without turning round, a dark, squat woman, broad all over; broad in the hips, the waist, the face, and stamped with the race-mark of high cheekbones. Her thick, straight black hair was cut "tin-basin style;" she wore men's boots, and her petticoats were nearly up to her knees. "Good morning, Nancy!" called Dorcas, blithely, wringing out her dishcloth.
Let us now turn to another race-mark, namely colour; because, though it may really be less satisfactory than others, for instance hair, that is the one to which ordinary people naturally turn when they seek to classify by races the present inhabitants of the earth.
Hence a race-mark, if one is to be found, must stand for, by co-existing with, the whole mass of properties that form the inheritance. Can colour serve for a race-mark in this profound sense? That is the only question here. First of all, what is the use of being coloured one way or the other? Does it make any difference?
It may well be, then, that it is not the hereditary temperament of the Negro, so much as the habit, which he shares with other peoples at the same level of culture, of living and acting in a crowd, that accounts for his apparent excitability. But after all, "mafficking" is not unknown in civilized countries. Thus the quest for a race-mark of a mental kind is barren once more.
The Pygmies of the Congo region have medium heads; the Bushmen of South Africa, usually regarded as akin in race, have long heads. The American Indians, generally supposed to be all, or nearly all, of one racial type, show considerable differences of head-form; and so on. It need not be repeated that any race-mark is liable to deceive.
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